Legends of Tomorrow - 'The Justice Society of America'

Stargirl, Doctor Mid-Nite, Hourman, Obsidian, Vixen and Commander Steel -
The Justice Society of America

For the next episode of Legends of Tomorrow we're staying in 1942; less by choice than because the Legends are detained by the Justice Society of America.

We open where we left off last time, with the JSA wanting to know why these clowns are impersonating the OSS. Our heroes explain, but when the JSA don't buy the time travel thing it all kicks off and the Legends get spanked by a team with a working hierarchy and group cohesion. Once they are captured, the JSA ponder whether to bury them in the deepest cell in Levenworth or send them to receive the professional medical help they so clearly need. It doesn't help that Hourman has no recollection of ever meeting them, let alone of almost immediately vanishing from time. They only begin to believe when Nate reveals that he wears the dog tags passed down from his grandfather: Commander Steel of the JSA.

"You take the blue pill; you stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit
hole goes.(2)"

Still, the JSA are roundly dismissive of Ray's claim that the Legend are heroes, denouncing them as unqualified amateurs(1) and inviting them to take the next timeship home. Unfortunately, as soon as they are underway, Nate's dog tags vanish, revealing that the timeline is in flux. The JSA are all heading to their deaths. It is revealed to the audience that this is because the Germans have a secret weapon; an 'enhancer' to level the playing field against the supersoldiers of the JSA, given to them by Eobard Thawne.

The Legends drop in on a Parisian cabaret as Stein masquerades as Max Lorenz. He is called upon to sing - mixing up references by performing 'Edelweiss' while telling the backing musicians to 'watch me for the changes and try to keep up' - which he does surprisingly well. Jax manages not to punch out a Nazi who requests 'please, no negro music' and they locate Vixen(3) undercover as a patron. Unfortunately, Ray just can not bring himself to heil Hitler, and a brawl ensues, broken up by the arrival of the rest of the JSA, who agree to a team up, but with some reluctance. Stein is adopted as leader of the legends, given his automatic acceptance as such by the JSA, and Sara notes that Nate is a haemophiliac.

Vixay? Raxen?

The two teams snag an amulet of mysterious provenance from a German convoy, but are driven off by an enhanced ubermensch who captures Ray and Vixen. Hourman is all for bombing the enemy compound, friends and all, but Sara insists on giving them time for Ray to work an escape plan. When Hourman questions her authoritah, an overwhelmed Stein steps down in favour of Sara, recognising her as the get-shit-done one in the Legends.

Ray and Vixen bust out, swiping an improved dose of enhancer. The ubermensch is bombed out of existence, but Steel and Nate take a hit. Nate is critically injured, but Ray uses the enhancer to save his life. Vixen tells him that he still isn't a superhero, because damn but these JSA types are hung up on powers, but that giving up the chance of them to save Ray does make him a hero. They leave the amulet with the JSA and head out, but Hourman is murdered by Thawne who swipes the amulet.

Once more, Legends of Tomorrow manages to chart a course between 'history was weird and different' and 'watchable episode of an ongoing series', with enough sexism to make the point - Hourman shuts down Sara in favour of Stein on several occasions, and Vixen notably always voices her ideas in the form of a request for permission - although the racism is perhaps over-generously limited to the Nazis. With Vixen as a recurring character, I'm worried that they're setting her up for the same sort of romantic dead-end that ate up so much of Hawkgirl's already unconvincing screen presence in season 1, and the character herself is a bit of a powers-centric douche. Still, hopefully they'll find things for her to actually do, instead of the black woman being the team load again.

(1) As a critique, this is entirely fair, although frankly the JSA could stand not to be so much a pack of dicks about it.
(2) Yes, I know.
(3) Due to scheduling conflicts, a reverse-legacy Vixen has been dropped into the JSA instead of using the 21st century one.

The Flash - 'Magenta'

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

So, Supergirl looked at prejudice against immigrants this week, and now The Flash is going to take a swing at that diciest of topics: mental illness.

Frankie Kane is a troubled girl with an abusive foster father and, as it turns out, a tendency for her eyes to glow and metal objects to hit people who have hurt her. But before we look into this, date night.

Iris and Barry have their first date, which Iris insists be Flash free, because Barry is cool as he is. The date sucks, and has to be called off when a rift opens in the basement of STAR Labs, disgorging Harry Wells and his daughter Jesse, who now possesses a Speed Force connection. While Jesse undergoes tests in the Speed Lab, Harry quickly deduces - mostly from Barry's unfamiliarity with the Lab - that he's messed around with causality again, but he's more concerned with getting people to talk Jesse out of superheroing. Wally, meanwhile, is bummed out that he still hasn't got his Speed, despite the same dark matter kick Jesse got, and even tries to stand in traffic to kickstart the process.

"You're not wrong, Julian; you're just an asshole."

Back to Frankie. She is brought in to the precinct and shows signs of having blacked out during the attack. Barry notes that it is common for foster kids to suppress unpleasant memories, but Julian swipes her water glass and tests for an unidentified element that he found in the various skin husks. He finds it, and concludes that she is a metahuman, and tips off Barry that she got her powers from Alchemy. Julian proceeds to harrangue Frankie until she loses control, trying to crush him and throwing cops around to distract the Flash.

Team Flash discover that Frankie has a history of dissociative disorder, and we see as she confronts Alchemy that there is a villainous personality - Magenta - which wants to be free of Frankie. It was Magenta who made the deal with Alchemy to this end, although as with the Rival, Alchemy pushes for Magenta to do her own dirty work and achieve her own apotheosis. Now, this is of course part and parcel of a history of very dubious discussion of dissociative personality disorders in superhero fiction, but it's not handled badly. Frankie's condition is linked to abuse in the foster care system, and there's more than a hint that Magenta is the villainous Flashpoint version of her personality manifesting via Alchemy's timeline transference, perhaps taking advantage of the existing disorder.

D'aww.

The team consider that Alchemy may be restoring powers that existed in the Flashpoint, which is a cue for Harry to snark, although again he's distracted by the fact that his relationship with Jesse is disintegrating. It's Caitlin who suggests that perhaps it's time to support her, instead of protecting her, and when Barry confronts Magenta he gives Jesse his blessing to help. She takes the weight from Barry, literally, by maintaining a wind tunnel to stop Magenta dropping a boat on a hospital to kill her foster father, while Barry... talks.

He appeals to Frankie and talks her out of the dissociative fugue which gives the Magenta personality its foothold, and the team pretty unilaterally agree to let her slip away rather than handing her over to the police. Thus, all is made right, except that when she mentions the dreams which preceded Alchemy's offer, Wally looks like this rings a bell, so maybe it's not just that he doesn't have Speed, but that he's been dreaming of the world where he did. If so, maybe he'll be the next to make a deal, which could be a mistake, as Barry and Joe discover when they see footage of Clariss being murdered by an invisible force at Iron Heights.

So, yeah; as a superhero show talking about mental illness, and especially dissociative disorder, this could have been a lot worse. I approve of Team Flash not just punching the problem, and of Barry's realisation that setting the Flash aside means leaving a piece of himself at home for his dates, and that it is thus never going to work. Also, hurrah for Harry sticking around for a while to point out how bad Barry's plans are. We need this.

Supergirl - 'Welcome to Earth'

All the world is waiting for her...

With Superman off to Metropolis, we get to meet another previously mentioned character this week, the President of the United States of America.

The President is touring DEO black sites as part of the launch for her Alien Amnesty Act, a statute entering law to allow non-humans to become full US citizens. Kara is pumped, especially as she gets to meet the Pres, but J'onn is all dour and 'humans and aliens don't mix'(1). In civilian life, Kara is assigned to interview Lena Luthor, sister of the world's most famous anti-alien, as part of a dick-measuring contest between James and Snapper Carr over how to 'do news'.

Oh, and that guy from the Kryptonian pod has busted out of containment and gone missing somewhere in national city.

Hi, I'm Maggie; I'll be your replacement sexual tension.

Someone attacks the President with heat vision and Johnny Pod is at the top of the suspect list. Alex finds her investigation hampered by an over-informed cop named Maggie Sawyer, but it's forced to eat a certain amount of crow when Sawyer takes her to an alien speakeasy to speak to a CI in the community. She isn't an alien, but as a small town gay Latina considers herself an ally. They get a lead that Johnny Pod is trying to phone home and Wynn picks up a signal being beamed to planet Daxam(2). Kara - who is itching for a fight after Lena reveals a prototype alien detector designed to allow the average American to tell if his or her neighbour isn't human and Carr orders her to rewrite her article to be objective instead of slamming the invention as a tool of hate - immediately considers the case closed. Daxim is a world of monarchal warmongers, so clearly this guy is guilty. She flies to the transmission source and beats him down, and also remembers that prejudice is cool and apologises to Lena.

Are we going with Miss Martian still?

Then the President is attacked again, by a (literally) fiery red-head, dubbed 'Scorcher', who is fought off, but kidnaps Maggie. Alex roughs up Maggie's CI to get a lead on Scorcher, having seen her at the bar, and she and Kara affect a rescue, with Maggie stepping in at the last minute to cold-cock the villain, after Kara starves her of oxygen with a super-speed wind funnel to dampen her abilities. The President signs the bill, thanks the DEO and as she leaves momentarily shows a wibbly alien face. Kara releases the Daximite, Mon-El(3), and apologises for being a douche. J'onn, meanwhile, is moved to try to connect with the alien community in the dive bar, where he runs into a bartender who turns out to be M'gann M'orzz, last daughter of Mars.

There's a lot fo good stuff in this episode, but I really wanted to be able to believe that the President was stealth-Wonder Woman, and in the week when the potential first female president was beaten by the face of white, male, privileged bigotry I was deeply disappointed that she turned out to be a secret alien. I really, really hope her agenda for pushing forward a platform of hope and tolerance isn't sinister, because we don't need that right now. It was heartening at least to see Kara confronting her prejudices, and I hope we'll see J'onn's glass-half-full-of-white-Martians attitude proved wrong (within the confines of the series still needing to have an alien a week for Supergirl to justifiably punch in the face.)

(1) He's probably still bitter about failing to get off with the alien-hating senator from last year. 

(2) I'm particularly impressed that he can distinguish between two possible transmission targets in the same solar system.
(3) So... is he also of the House of El? Like... He's one of the Daxim Els or something?

Luke Cage - 'Take it Personal'

"He's alive! He's alive!"

I caught another episode of Luke Cage this morning to try to lift my funk over the election results. It was about a slick, corrupt, populist politician making hay of tragedy and fear.

'Take it Personal' is about the final transition of Carl Lucas into Luke Cage. We begin, as he began, in the acid bath, with Claire's quick thinking saving Luke's life as she lobs a toaster into the acid bath as an impromptu defibrillator, and works with Burstein to adapt the treatment to soften his skin. With some effort they are able to remove the shrapnel from his gut and he heals in hours. He even recovers his sense of humour, waking to ask Claire 'who are you?' before breaking into a huge grin.

Burstein tries to convince them that, although his work began in supersoldiery, Luke is the key to a treatment that will eliminate cancer and disease, and effectively make people immortal(1). He appeals to Carl to work with him, but, spurred on by discovering Reva's video logs which prove her knowledge of the experiments and fight ring, and her part in selecting Carl Lucas for the programme, Luke rejects his old identity and asserts the new: He is Luke Cage, and no-one should ever have to be like him. He trashes the lab, Claire takes the flash drive and they book.

Diamondback is an interesting look at the global response to superheroes.

Back in Harlem, Diamondback calls Mariah in and tells her it's time to push his weapons on the police, starting with a less powerful, mass-produced version of the Judas. To create demand, he dons a hoodie and some sort of Iron Man knock-off glove, with which he murders a popular community beat cop while yelling 'I'm Luke Cage!' Subtle. This provokes a witch hunt from the NYPD, who round up all the black men in hoodies they can find.

They eventually pick up Lonnie, the kid from the barber shop massacre, and here the show reminds us that it is not just street smart, but film savvy. Lonnie's mother was initially just there to indicate that Luke was avoiding healthy hookups, and the fact that she is an almost-qualified lawyer seemed a throwaway, but Hey-oh! Lonnie knows his rights; he knows that 'if you're innocent there's no harm in talking' is bullshit and he knows that they can't hold him without probably cause for walking home from chess club while black. Cut back from the Inspector reminding Misty that Luke Cage is their focus until he's off the streets, and the (black) officer questioning Lonnie has beaten the snot out of the kid. Outrage naturally follows, and Mariah uses this moment to direct the tides of fear and anger towards the man who supposedly kicked the hornet's nest: Luke Cage.

Being down Georgia way, Luke and Claire do a road trip to Savannah. There they visit the church where Lucas Snr. preached, and Luke recalls scenes from his childhood which, meaningless at the time, add up to confirm that Willis Stryker is his half-brother, and the whole thing has a serious Jacob and Esau vibe. Misty, meanwhile, finds Stryker, connects him to Carl Lucas and recognises Luke in courtroom photos. Luke gets philosophical about the lies in his life, before he and Claire, still friendly-flirty, head home, where they get a tip off about a meeting at Harlem's Paradise to discuss the Luke Cage menace.

"But let's not lose focus of what this is really about: Me."

Mariah is holding a rally, using Lonnie's injuries to whip up anger and then direct it towards the 'superfreak' Cage. She also makes reference to Jessica Jones, clearly discounting Kilgrave's powers and painting the super-strong woman as the villain. She works this all around to arming the police against people like Cage, so that they don't need to victimise the innocent, which honestly comes off as a bit of a leap for the crowd's mood. Then again, I suspect that the crowd might be fairly selectively formed. Mariah confronts her council rival while a reverend speaks, but then Luke - so far undercover - spots Misty heading for the stairs and follows. This puts him in the right place to shield Misty after Stryker gets the drop on her, covering her with his body as Stryker's crew open up on them and assuring her 'I got you.'

'Take it Personal' completes the journey begun in 'DWYCK', as Luke regains his centre and his sense of self and is freed from the deceits of the past. His view of Reva and his father is shattered, but this allows him to see the world without the filter of lies. It makes it hard to trust, but it signals a sea change and now he's finding his own way instead of living up to someone's memory. And what is that path? Who is Luke Cage? Well, one thing we know: He's got you.

(1) Marvel taking a leaf from Wolverine's book and applying it to Luke's enhanced healing factor, although with the tank and all he comes off more as a more successful version of Deadpool.

The Exorcist - 'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee'

Casey (Hannah Kasulka), Kat (Brianne Howley), Henry (Alan Ruck) and Angela (Geena Davis) Rance; Brother Bennett (Kurt Egyiawan); Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera); and Father Marcus (Ben Daniels).

The Exorcist is the latest in a long line of movie-to-TV adaptations, some of which have been great and some of which haven't. On the basis of the series opener, 'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee', it could well be one of the former.

Points for nerve, opening with a direct homage to the movie.

Father Tomas is young, hip, and cares about his parishioners. He keeps in touch with a pre-priest girlfriend and looks after his sister's kid sometimes. Run, sister. Get away and take the kid with you. I suspect being priest adjacent will not be healthy. Because he is so approachable, he is approached by Angela Rance, whose daughter Kat was injured in a car accident and now seems changed, and whose husband suffers from what appears to be Alzheimer's or something similar. Angela believes that Kat's troubles are caused by a demon.

Well, Tomas knows his stuff and cautions her that demons are religious metaphors rather than actual infernal beings, but she is insistent, and soon after he begins to have dreams in which he sees a priest performing an exorcism in Mexico City; an exorcism that ultimately and tragically fails. That priest is Father Marcus, the kind of hard-drinking, chain-smoking exorcist who works without backup and will pull a gun on any Vatican City pen-pusher who wants to stop him doing his job. During a home visit, Henry tells Tomas, apparently out of nowhere, where to find Father Marcus in a retreat for troubled priests. Marcus is perturbed by the story that Tomas tells, and warns him that he is stepping into something huge, and that it is not God guiding him there but the darker power. If Tomas is smart, he'll get out while he can, and if this is God's sign to Marcus, he can do one.

Mean, motherfumur servant of God.

Naturally, Tomas doesn't leave it alone. He offers Angela his help, explaining that he believes that this is the purpose God has for him. Investigating a noise in the attic, he sees a rat slain by some invisible force, and is attacked by Kat's sister Casey, black eyed and creepy AF, although she instantly reverts to normal when Angela puts the lights on.

'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee' is a cracking opener, with tension and horror and just the right balance of the mundane and the uncanny, as when an explanation of how demons aren't real is interrupted by a crow driving headlong though Father Tomas' window and bleeding strategically on his Bible. It's a little bit grim and more than usually short on humour for modern TV, and in places downright nasty, but the series overall is strong enough to justify the nastiness. We need to see the horrid aftermath of a failed exorcism to understand Marcus' reluctance to get involved in another one. It's a far cry from something like Hunters, which just wants to shock.

The Musketeers - The rest of Season 3

"We shall brood like it was Season 1!"

After a bit of a blitz, here are my thoughts on the tail end of the BBC's men in leather spectacular, The Musketeers.

We follow 'To Play the King' with 'Death of a Hero', which bowls us a googly because the 'hero' in question is Feron, who dies on Grimaud's blade after a change of heart about assassinating his half-brother. We're then left with Grimaud as our principal villain, which is promising with his dark swagger and impenetrable plots, but the problem is that moving him front and centre requires allowing the audience to see how the sausage is made, and he just can't quite draw the water he's been built up for and he becomes ever more of a thug.

And Porthos finally gets a love interest for more than one episode! (She's in
two.)

In 'Fool's Gold' we get a glimpse of his upbringing as he flees to his home town. The Musketeers pursue, but fall in with a band of women and children living in the woods to avoid the depredations of deserters now that their husbands, brothers and fathers have all died in the war with Spain. Athos talks Grimaud with his tough-as-nails foster mother, while Porthos has angsty bonding time with pregnant badass archer Elodie, whose husband was part of a regiment he knows to have been wiped out to a man. A group of deserters comes looking for gold that they stashed nearby and which the women took to support their community, and the Musketeers assist in the astonishingly brutal defence of the settlement.

"Aramis for supper again?"

The rest is mostly arc plot and sort of blurs together. The Queen backs a public education programme run by Sylvie, but it gets sabotaged so that a bunch of lewd pamphlets about the Queen's lovers are printed instead. Then Grimaud intercepts Aramis carrying a letter from Anne trying to broker peace with Spain behind Louis' back. The King comes to suspect Aramis' involvement with the Queen and forbids him to see her or the Dauphin ever again. Athos does get back together with Sylvie, just in time for Milady to arrive back in town(1) and seek reconciliation through the time-honoured method of breaking into his house. With her other prospects surprisingly thin on the ground, she offers her services as a spy and assassin to Treville.

"I'm basically ginger Feron."

The King dies and Treville - declared as surprise regent - smuggles the Dauphin into hiding, with Sylvie and Constance to protect him, while he plays Gaston and the Duke of Lorraine off against one another. Grimaud manages to snatch the Dauphin by following the Queen, who has gone to great lengths to find where her son has been hidden, the location being kept from her and from Aramis. Everything falls apart and Treville is killed, although the Dauphin is rescued, and seriously, only Aramis really acknowledges that while they might not like his secrecy, Treville got within an ace of settling the whole thing without bloodshed by bluffing with a hand of nothing until the Queen screwed it up.

Awkward.

Finally, in 'We Are the Garrison', Grimaud blows up the Musketeer pub and the garrison - because at the end of the series you might as well set your big sets on fire - taking out Cadet Redshirt(2) - and then kidnaps Sylvie. The Musketeers pull off a rescue after casually swearing off honour for the occasion, with the aid of the thought-to-be-dead D'Artagnan. D'Artagnan kills Captain Whatsisname of the Red Guards and Grimaud is wounded, but escapes to be accidentally treated by Constance. Then he tries to blow up the coronation, but is thwarted and finally killed by Athos.

The Queen becomes Regent, hires Milady to shank Gaston, and then reforms the regiment as the People's Musketeers. D'Artagnan is given command of the new regiment and tasked, along with Constance, with rebuilding it. Aramis becomes First Minister and Royal Queen Snogger, putting Milady's snarky declaration that the Queen would now be alone out the window. Porthos marries Elodie before setting off to be a general, and Athos and Sylvie head off to raise their expected child somewhere else.

Season 3 of the Musketeers has been... okay. It's a shame, because Season 1 was good and Season 2 excellent, but the mid-season loss of Feron and a lack of focus meant that the personal stakes felt distinctly less, and thus the pressure to set aside honour against a foe who was less impressive the more we saw of him came off as forced. Honestly, I think that killing off one of the four at the start of the final episode might have been the better move, although I can see why they didn't want to go that way. Also, I've nothing against Sylvie, but Milady was missed, even when she was around, especially as Constance was a sadly reduced presence.

(1) Called it!
(2) Called it!

Star Wars: Rebels - 'The Last Battle'

These guys.

"Roger-roger."
"Who's Roger?"

After giving loads of screen time to Hera last week, we're giving some focus to the Jedi boys, although really most of 'The Last Battle' is about someone else entirely.

Captain Rex takes the boys to retrieve a weapons cache from a Clone War battleground left untouched since the conflict ended with Order 66 and the deactivation of the separatist droid army, while the girls take the Ghost to raid a fuel dump. Unfortunately it turns out that the battleground is not as abandoned as it was thought, with a battalion of battle droids still on site and active. Led by the super tactical droid General Kalani, this group remain active thanks to Kalani's presumption that the shut-down command was a Republic trick, echoing Rex's refusal of Order 66. Determined to achieve resolution, Kalani challenges Rex to fight one final battle of the Clone Wars; clones and Jedi against droids, with Zeb's life as an incentive.

"Super tactical droid, thank you."

Rex leads the Jedi in an assault on Kalani's command centre, fighting past regulars and destroyers, all of which have seen decidedly better days (as, arguably, has Rex.) Rex becomes angry at Ezra's inability to stick to his plan of battle, but Kanan assures his padawan that this is not about him, but about Rex's need to win this one his own way in order to get some closure. Thanks to malfunctioning droids they make it to the command centre, but Kalani refuses to acknowledge the win.

As Ezra realises, they should have lost, but the droids were basically falling apart already. Nothing is really resolved.

Hero pose!

Fortunately, the Empire shows up and starts picking off droids, allowing Ezra to make a hail Mary play, convincing Rex and Kalani to accept that the Republic and the Separatists both lost the Clone War to the Empire. The two sides then join forces, bowling proton bombs at the feet of advancing AT-ATs while the Jedi bounce droid blaster bolts at the bombs to set them off. This last is pretty silly, but they needed something to do. Our heroes escape on a shuttle which they earmark for the replacement Phantom, while Kalani makes it out on another, declining to join the Rebellion because it has only a 1% chance of success. I guess no-one ever told him not to tell people the odds.

'The Last Battle' is a decent episode, but suffers from two things that are not actually flaws at all. First, it leans on the Clone Wars series, which I haven't seen. Second, it follows 'Hera's Heroes', and it's never an enviable position to follow an excellent episode. It is good to see Ezra flexing his light side muscles a bit with those mad diplomacy skillz.